"Linking Innovation, Cultural Understanding and Global Thinking: Motivating Technology Students to be Attentive to Cultural Issues"

Conference in March 2004, in which he argued that the key to preserving US jobs was not protectionism, but education and training to ensure that Americans are able to thrive in a global economy: "As history clearly shows, our economy is best served by full and vigorous engagement in the global economy Consequently, we need to increase our efforts to ensure that as many of our citizens as possible have the opportunity to capture the benefits that flow from that engagement 1 ."The urgency with which this "vigorous engagement" has to be pursued in the area of technical education is apparent from remarks made by William Wulf, in his Presidents Speech to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003, in which he concludes with this advice: "Our society is dependent upon technology created by engineers.Engineering is changing rapidly, and I believe engineering education has to change even faster for us to maintain our quality of life.We've studied it to death.We know what to do.So let's get on with it! 2 " The rapidly changing technological ecosystems demand that students in science and technology prepare for the growing impact of globalization.